Peace
by WElle
Summary: Drabbles about how the Winchesters find peace.
1. Dark Water

Dark Water

He floats in the oversized bath in the ridiculous motel room on the outskirts of Las Vegas. It might have been in style in the 80's. The floor is black tile, the walls are black tile, the counters black tile, the fixtures all lacquered black. The tub is black. It makes the water look black. Like a lake. He thinks the water should be cold instead of hot. His eyes are closed. He floats and lets his thoughts be frivolous.

No Sammy's Destiny, no Weight of the World, no What Dad Did.

He works the tap with his feet, lets more hot water pour in, makes it as hot as he can stand. He floats, his ears submerged so all the noise around him is muffled. The air-conditioning, the odd car driving by. He likes the haziness of not-noise/not-silence. He wonders if Superman really could take Godzilla. He thinks Sam needs a haircut. He hums a single note for as long as he can before running out of breath because it sounds cool underwater. He stretches. He rolls over face down in the water for a second then rolls back, lets the water drip off his face. He just exists.

And the world stays muffled.


	2. Dust Mites

Dust Mites

He's been alone now for 8 months. No snoring filling up the room he sleeps in. No arguing filling up the car he lives in. No sulfur, salt or fire filling up the air he breathes. No idea where his father and brother are spending the night. Just stretches of silence, pages of notes and hours of serenity alone with his thoughts and his books.

His books. Contrary to popular belief the early spring air in northern California can slice right through a person's clothes, even in the sunshine. Like Dean slicing through a ghoulie-ghosty-long-legged-beastie with a smile on his face. So he picks up his pace and takes the steps two by two, the way his long legs were built to take him, to the library, where his long legs were meant to take him. Finals are over, which means all the books will be back on their shelves and he can gorge himself like a glutton. _Till he pukes IQ points_, like Dean says.

He's nineteen today. It's the first birthday he won't spend with Dean or Dad or Dean and Dad. It'll be the first birthday he'll spend with friends and cake in a proper restaurant with linen and cutlery instead of a cheap walk up or crummy motel. The first birthday without a poorly wrapped, but well thought out gift and punch in the arm. It aches a little.

But by the time the ache hits his throat he steps through the front door and it disappears. Smothered, soothed, washed away by a deep tidal breath through his nose.

The air smells like dusty old books.


	3. Straddling Fences

Straddling Fences

It's a really fine line. The line between oblitteratingly drunk and throwing up on your shoes. It's usually a one drink difference. Trouble is you may have already had that drink and you just don't know it yet.

Dean's good at this game. The balance on one foot game. He plays it all the time. He's been playing it since he was sixteen. Bartender give me another, no thanks that's it for me. Three hundred bucks in his pocket, a pool cue across his skull. Blonde screaming in the backseat, blonde's boyfriend giving him a black eye in the alley. Come to think of it, he's been playing it since he was four. Yes sir, no sir. Sammy, Sam. Zig and get the freak of the week between the eyes, zag and get sutures.

The cold bathroom tile against his face is nice. He's pretty sure he's on the wrong side of the line tonight, but there are these next five minutes where his world is narrowed to concentrating on not heaving. No heaving. No monsters, no yelling, no any one leaving.

And then the blackness and quiet.


	4. Running Shoes

Running Shoes

His lungs are burning. Ten steps further, then another ten, then ten more.

It will be light out soon. Dean will wonder where he is. The day will start, the laptop will be out, the coffee will burn his stomach, breakfast will sit like a brick, he will sit like a brick in the front seat on the road to wherever. He'll try to doze. Bad dreams will shock him out of sleep. Jessica will still be gone. His father will still be gone. His mind will whirl around, his thoughts will trip over each for attention.

But right now his thoughts are straight. He counts. He's been at this for an hour so far. He doesn't need a watch. He counts each stride. Two steps every second, sixty seconds a minute, sixty minutes an hour. Seventy two hundred steps. He'll go to eight thousand. A nice even number. Eight hundred, seven ninety nine, seven ninety eight, seven ninety seven more steps, then he'll stop. _Compulsive much? _

For now he just pounds out the steps.


	5. Wet Stone

Wet Stone

Cleaning guns requires more attention, even though it's still mostly automatic. Mostly the skill is in his bones and muscles and not his memory, but it's not the same as the knives. So he does the guns first and leaves the knives for last.

It's the _swick swick swick_ sound that he looks forward to. He lets his vision blur as he stares forward and down, nothing particular in his line of sight. He knows just how many strokes on each side of each blade of each knife. He knows how many _swicks _of quiet voidiness he's allowed before he's made to pay attention to whatever.

The clicking of the laptop keys fades. The voices on the television, the colour of the motel wall, the smell of the motel carpet all fade. _Swick, swick, swick_. He doesn't have to count, because his body remembers how many strokes he's made. His body remembers just how much pressure to apply when he runs his thumb along the blade to test it, what it should feel like. His brain is free to be hypnotized. And his thinking slows, his heart beat slows. His mind doesn't wander. It idles.

_Swick, swick, swick._


	6. Burning Incense

Burning Incense

He has no idea what religion he would have been raised. He's never thought to ask. Catholic, he thinks. He likes the Catholics. Something about the ceremony and the secret society-ness of them. He likes the rites, the sound of the Latin he'd been raised to wield like a weapon. But mostly he likes the old churches. The cavernous cathedrals made of stone, lit by stained glass painted sun, full of echoes. The soothing smell of frankincense and beeswax.

He fingers the rosary he picked up years ago and says the Hail Mary over and over and over, his head bent, his eyes closed. He prays for the soul of his father, trapped, he suspects, in the flames. He prays for the soul of his brother, so that he's less lonely, less sad, less exhausted. He prays for his own soul, promises anything so that it won't turn black. He doesn't pray for his mother, because in his heart of hearts he knows she's alright now. He feels more tranquil here than on top of a mountain of salt.

He lights a candle and takes a deep breath.


	7. Baby Shampoo

Baby Shampoo

He wraps the warm, compliant little boy in arms and sits up on the motel bed with him cradled in his lap. Downy dark blond hair still damp from the bath, he nuzzles the top of his little head under his chin and murmurs soft assurances. He breaths in the smell of little boy skin and baby shampoo and feels the warmth of the body against him.

_I love you so much. I love you and Sammy so much_. He whispers it. He kisses the top of his boy's head and picks up the worn out little book. He knows the words by heart. He knows just when his little man has drifted off. Same spot in the story every night. He finishes the story anyway. This moment, night after night, this little bedtime ritual is the only time of day his heart doesn't hurt, the lump in his throat doesn't choke him, her absence doesn't make every bone in his body ache.

He puts the book down, closes the light and they sleep.


	8. Stream of Conciousness

Stream of Conciousness

He talks all the time. Streams and streams of words: ridiculous, funny, half-assed, vacant sounds. It doesn't matter as long as he keeps talking. Because these words are easy. They are empty and don't cost anything. And they fill up his ears. They distract him and clutter his mind so the other words have no room. Get no attention.

The other words are demanding. The other words mean something, they carry information about him, about the state of him, they give him away. They are heavy and sticky and sharp and hurt. Those words make it obvious how much he flounders, how little he is prepared for. They render him dumb. Sometimes for months at a time, like when he was little. Like the time after his brother left, the times he started hunting alone where he would go days without the sound of his own voice.

He talks all the time so he doesn't have to listen to his blaring silence.


	9. Sweet Dreams

Sweet Dreams

He doesn't mind sleeping, as a matter of fact. The nightmares are horrible and have been getting steadily worse, but there are good dreams too. Jess is alive and smiling and her skin is warm from the sun. Mom is alive and smiling and she's ruffling Dean's hair. Dean is happy, really happy, not just smiling. Dad is alive, wiping motor oil off his hands.

He usually dreams these dreams in the car. He thinks he's only half asleep when they're conjured because he can hear Metallica in the background of most of them.

Every time he dreams this way he fights against consciousness, fights against surfacing.


	10. Easy Lay

Easy Lay

Fucking generally keeps him distracted for a few hours. It occupies his whole mind, crowds out everything else. It's almost like hunting. The pick up, the drinks, the foreplay, the main event, the sneaking out in the middle of the night.

He goes for the ones that don't really intrigue him, because he's not interested in being interested. He's interested in warm skin, a hot mouth, a slick slide into home. He wants his thoughts obliterated, at least twice, and hey, he's a gentleman, he'll obliterate hers too, twice for each of his. That takes concentration too, well not really, that part he does on automatic. What he concentrates on is soft desperate sounds and the feel of someone touching him. Not that he'd admit it, but he's a real whore for affection, for physical contact, for a touch that isn't a fist. The sound of someone else's heart beat.

It makes him warm, for just a little while.


	11. Enter Sandman

Enter Sandman

In a million years, under threat of torture, Sam will never admit he doesn't mind Dean's choice of music. Oh he hates it. He makes up his own words and sings them in his head whenever the tapes are blaring in the car. But he doesn't mind it.

He only ever hears this stuff in the front passenger seat of the Impala because he's only gotten to sit in the front passenger side since the car was Dean's. So long as it was Dad's baby, Sam rode in the back or ran the risk of older brotherly retaliation for side stepping the pecking order. Wet willies from the backseat; getting the crotches cut out of his boxers; or having cut out pictures of porn stuck between the pages of his school work (even he had to admit, several years later, that that had been a pretty good one). Being in the passenger seat means he's sitting beside Dean. And sitting beside Dean means someone is looking out for him.

Someone is looking out for him every minute of every day that he rides along to this horrible music.


	12. Purring Like a Kitten

He likes the feel of the metal parts in his hand. Likes the wrench, the weight of it, the simultaneous order and violence its existence implies. He likes the smell of the motor oil, the heat of the engine wafting in his face when he opens the hood. The memory of the sound of his dad's voice, a slow patient cadence, reciting instructions of how to tune up, fix the rattle, adjust the carb. He likes the way his face is hidden by smudges of dirt and the shade from the hood.

He is alone here, the only place he allows his thoughts, his real ones, the scary, hurty, needy, demanding ones to run amok in his mind. He treats them like children at his ankles. Pays them dismissive attention, humours them while he's actually focused on his task.

The engine purrs like kitten when he's done and he knows he did _something_ right.


End file.
